Art curator promotes Vietnamese art to the world

Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Art researcher and critic
Iola Lenzi arrived in Vietnam for the first time 20 years ago and was charmed
by the refined culture.

Her background is rather unusual. She was born in Canada and is a lawyer by
training, but taught herself art history.

She then became a critic and curator of contemporary Southeast Asian art with a
good grasp of art history.

She has a strong attachment to Vietnamese art and artists.

In the 1990s, she worked with Southeast Asian contemporary art in Singapore.

New art in Hanoi in the mid-1990s was innovative. After seeing works by Vu Dan
Tan (1946-2009) exhibited at APT2 in Australia, and images of works by Truong Tan,
Nguyen Van Cuong, Nguyen Quang Huy, Nguyen Minh Thanh, and Dinh Thi Tham Poong in
publications, she travelled to Hanoi in 2000 to meet some of them and continue
her research.

Lenzi first met artist Tan in 2000 together with his wife, curator and critic
Natalia Kraevskaia, at Salon Natasha on Hang Bong street.

She has conducted research on contemporary Vietnamese art in Hanoi and HCM
City, and has been involved in numerous projects with Vietnamese artists.

In Vietnam, she has curated shows in Hanoi and HCM City, mostly at the Goethe
Institute Hanoi, but also at the HCM City Museum of Fine Arts.

She has also been involved in publishing projects, working with the Vietnam University
of Fine Arts, which published her research about tradition in contemporary
Vietnamese art; and with art critic and writer Dao Mai Trang, for her 2010
anthology on Vietnamese contemporary art - and an essay about Vu Dan Tan.

Lenzi has many Vietnamese friends who are artists.

“Curating shows, and commissioning new work involves intimate bonds and trust,
so, friendships blossom,” said Lenzi. “Artist-curator Tran Luong and I have
worked together, enjoying friendly arguments.”

She also nurtured a friendship with Dinh Q Le. “Dinh’s house in HCM City is
filled with antiques. I was there for tea and admired an ancient Annamese
celadon bowl, which he then graciously gave me.”

Lenzi’s special interest in the art of Vu Dan Tan has led her to work on a PhD
thesis on the artist, who began producing art in the 1970s.

“He was both prolific and unusually free in his expression, never constrained
by conventional media or themes,” said Lenzi. “His work opened completely new
expressive paths in Vietnamese art, but very few know his work, except
superficially.

“Many do not understand that Tan’s art was conceptual even before doi moi (renewal)
period. Because I worked extensively with Tan when he was alive, had many
conversations with him, commissioned new work, and analysed series in depth, I
decided to write a PhD on his practice which is important in Vietnamese art
history, but also in Southeast Asian and global contemporary art history.”

The thesis also examines avant-garde art by younger artists emerging in the
1990s. “Vietnamese art is hugely varied,” she said.

“The best of it is rich and sophisticated in concept, form and construction,
uses many types of cultural, aesthetic and historic references. The works deal
with local paradoxes and tensions that make sense to audiences everywhere and
should not be abandoned.”

Lenzi said Vietnam’s pioneer contemporary artists, who emerged in early 1990s Hanoi
or before, were testing many boundaries.

“They were brave, both in the new languages of art they developed, and in the
concepts and themes they examined,” she said.

“They didn’t state, they questioned. A key aspect of their work was its active
engagement with what was happening around them. Some artists emerging now are
trying new things too.